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Monday, November 14, 2016

Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign was filled with a lot of bold talk about “draining the swamp” and fighting against lobbyists. He attacked Hillary Clinton for her supposed cozy relationship with banks, and talked about how he’d stand up to Wall Street on behalf of the little guy.

That was then.

Now, he wants to grant banking lobbyists’ every wish. While the first few days after the election have brought little clarity on most topics (maybe he won’t repeal the Affordable Care Act after all, or maybe he will), Trump has made one very specific promise – to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act.

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Simply put, before 2008, a federal agency was enabling banks to cheat consumers, and blocking those banks’ customers from fighting back. And that’s why Dodd-Frank included numerous provisions designed to make it much harder for federal regulators to wipe away state laws.

The rampant fraud that cost people their homes, and also cheated millions of investors from their savings, was encouraged and abetted by a corrupt system where government regulators worked hand-in-hand with banks.

That’s the model the Trump Administration is poised to take us all back to.

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The [federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] weighed in on 60 court cases between 1994 and 2006 where consumers who felt they had been cheated were suing banks. The OCC (dependent on bankers’ good will for its budget) sided with the banks in 58 out of the 60 cases.

But wait; the OCC did even more for big banks. The agency issued regulations erasing state consumer protection laws, and replaced them with . . . nothing.